Transforms all types of self-evaluation and improvement planning, e.g. school self-evaluation and teacher reflection.
Used successfully in a number of education organisations in Scotland. See the case study below.
Loaded with templates and relevant criteria for Scotland, e.g. HGIOS 4.0 and GTC Professional Standards.
Completely customisable with your own evaluation criteria, performance indicators or improvement priorities. Try it now.
Subject self-review and improvement planning
Empower your middle leaders to evaluate their area of responsibility and create plans for sustainable improvement.
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Encourage evidence-based judgements.
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Increase analysis and diagnostic skills.
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Strengthen strategic thinking and planning.
We've found the best way to discuss iAbacus is using Zoom, Teams or GoogleMeet. We can talk about your requirements and we’ll share our screen to show you how it works. We’ll answer all your questions and show you how iAbacus is tailored to your education setting.
Specific templates for Scotland
Below is a selection of specific templates designed for self-evaluation and improvement planning in Scotland. Try them for yourself with a free, no-obligation trial account.
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Bell Baxter School - Fife
Carol Ann Penrose
Rector
Scotland
HGIOS
"In Scotland there is a requirement for teachers to be involved in self-evaluation, but in reality it’s difficult for them to set aside the time while they’re busy teaching.
"I’ve been looking for a while for a tool that would support this process – that would make teachers’ lives easier. I also wanted something that would make them want to engage with self-evaluation and make it their own.
"The other aspect was making judgements based on evidence. Teachers have a gut reaction which is usually spot on, but it needs to be clear what evidence backs it up. iAbacus just seemed to tick all the boxes.
"What’s good is that you can see the whole process – where we were at the beginning and how we’ve moved on – without needing to go through multiple versions.
"iAbacus is just a really efficient electronic tool."
Teachers’ response
"It’s gone down really well. Teachers have found it incredibly easy to use and helpful in their thinking. Already they’re coming back with different uses for it, which I see as a sign of a good tool.
"Principal teachers are using it to engage staff in evaluation. They all decide as a faculty what are the key pieces of evidence they’re going to use. It has the potential to be quite powerful in moving on their thinking.
"Initially we thought about getting licenses just for the principal teachers, but I didn’t want it to become another management tool. It’s important to me that all teachers are engaged, so everyone has access to it. It’s a tool for every teacher.
"We’ve used iAbacus to create the whole school improvement plan for next year. Every faculty has evaluated themselves and come up with evidence and an action plan sitting underneath. Next year faculties will review this throughout the year, updating their progress and evidence.
"The plan is to focus on a specific element for a six-week period, then go back to the abacus and see if they can shift their beads. They’ll then decide what evidence they will use to support that.
"The whole process will be much easier. With previous Word documents, they sit on a server and you only go back at the end of the year as a post mortem. This will be a living document."
Customising iAbacus
"We're looking to develop an abacus to evaulate the impact of our newly created Bell Baxter Learning Standard, which sets a clear baseline for consistent high quality learning and teaching across our school.
"We're also looking at how we could get our young people to use iAbacus to reflect on their own practice using the HGIOURS framework. The goal is to get young people actively engaged and reflecting on what the school could do better.
"iAbacus has the potential to be a very powerful tool for moving the school forward."